Assignment

Fitness Garage is a small, independent, functional fitness gym based in Sheffield, UK, that opened in January 2014. Our role was to create a brand identity with a strong brand attitude that helped this start-up punch above its weight in this highly competitive sector.

Approach

With such a competitive market, limited resources, challenging location and a market focus on functional fitness, the new brand needed to tell a compelling story.

The combination of the challenges of an industrial setting and a functional fitness approach helped guide our thinking. In a place where you don’t train on machines but become a machine, the idea of Fitness Garage was born. Your body is a complex piece of machinery and needs to be maintained and operated correctly. The name Fitness Garage describes the place where you can bring your body for its conditioning and where you can ‘Fine tune your performance’.

The identity itself takes inspiration from the retro garage signs of the 1950s but with a modern twist, using industrial colours - yellow and black along with a signature motif of a tyre that also represents the functional fitness ethos of the gym. The branding and colourways give strong visibility and the design has great stand out in a market place with little innovation from a branding perspective. We wanted the uniqueness of the offer to really live through the branding so the brand concept plays an important role throughout the business.

Results

The brand identity launched into a very competitive market that is dominated by both national and public sector operators. In its first six months Fitness Garage has been awarded ‘Newcomer Gym of the Year’ by the National Fitness Awards with specific reference made to the branding. During this period membership increased by 162.5%, exceeding targets by 62.5%.